The violets under my front step are blooming and fragrant, and there is a violet carpet under the bushes nearby. The mini-daffodils, barely four inches tall, have opened, and the taller daffodils are on the verge of it. Our forsythia hasn't quite burst out yet, nor the flowering quince, but they are both brimming with potential. And all along the canal yesterday, John and I spotted pairs of mallards, some scouting good nesting sites and others checking out the fast food menu, bright orange feet splashing.
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Walking across campus this past sunny Sunday afternoon, John and I encountered a flock of about two dozen robins, feasting on the crabapples near the Rec-Fitness Building. They were all a-flutter, hopping around on the melting snow, keeping a safe distance from passersby, and constantly moving from ground to tree branch and then back down to join the flock on the ground.
I grew up thinking of robins as the traditional sign of spring, but I've learned that the robin's winter range extends from the Gulf coat into Michigan. We don't notice them as much in winter, unless we come across a flock like this, because they don't come to bird feeders. They prefer wintered-over fruit, like bitter crabapples that have mellowed with the freezing and thawing. The summer robins from this area are most likely further south right now, while the ones we saw Sunday spent their summer further north. Who knows -- maybe this is the same flock that we saw feasting on mountain ash berries at the Glick cabin near Edmonton last September, getting ready for their flight south. I had a serendipitous discovery yesterday. I've begun reading Nature as Spiritual Practice, by Steven Chase, a book I expect to refer to again here. In his preface, he refers to a phrase of Gerald May, "the power of the slowing," saying that it means if we give careful attention to nature, it has the ability to slow us down to its pace.
I was intrigued by the phrase, which resonates with what happens for me as I take photos and also as I work with them later. I googled it and discovered that it comes from May's book, The Wisdom of Wilderness. A quick online check revealed that neither the local library nor the nearby seminary had a copy. "Oh, well," I thought, and turned to getting ready for the morning's direction session. Later in the day, a friend asked me to ride along on a short trip to Kalamazoo, suggesting we could visit the Friends of the Library bookstore while we waited for her violin bow to be re-haired. They have a room full of a wide selection of books. I began perusing the Religion shelves, and there it was -- May's Wisdom of Wilderness, on sale for a dollar! So I've been sidetracked from the Chase book, reading instead May's vivid stories of his encounters with the Power of the Slowing, which he experienced as a vivid Presence, welcoming him, slowing him, and reconnecting him with all nature around him. One of his paragraphs jumped out at me as fitting well with this past week. Nature, I think, knows nothing of concepts of time or of the present. Nature--our own and that of the world around us--lives in Presence instead of "in the present." Rather than moving through time, it simply exists in cycles and successions:sound and silence, light and darkness, birth and death, activity and stillness, courting and nesting, eating and sleeping. Everything is rhythms. Everything is seasons. p 71 The rhythms and successions have been swirling this week -- from warm temperatures bringing along the snowdrops and, amazingly, a dandelion in the front yard, to yet another round of snowfall and the sight of birds at the feeder at Pathways Retreat this morning. The dandelion is a cheerful golden sunburst, and yet I realize I greet the snowdrops with delight, and the dandelion instead with a sense of "What? A weed, already?" As I slow down and reflect, this does not seem right. Each is what it is, and the dandelion's yellow is a welcome burst of early color, to be received on its own humble terms. Perhaps the Power of the Slowing will slow me further, enough to welcome that gold sunburst, and to wonder what became of it in today's snow. It's too dark to check now -- perhaps tomorrow. Creation is a song, a song that we can see, a sacred gift from God, let's join the harmony. This chorus has been singing in my head all week. We sang it at church Sunday, # 24 in Sing the Journey, to the accompaniment of a soft, steady drum beat. It was written by Doug and Jude Krehbiehl, inspired by the writings of Lawrence Hart, a Cheyenne peace chief and Mennonite, and by Cheyenne Spiritual Songs.You can hear Jude sing the chorus and first verse here. The verses celebrate many scenes from creation and I find they trigger a treasure trove of memories for me. I sing The rolling of the oceans, and I find myself standing on Goleta Beach watching the waves roll in, or floating in the warm waters of the second beach at Parque Nacional Manuel Antonio in Costa Rica. I sing the bubbling of a spring, and I am standing in the middle of the woods at Camp Friedenswald, watching the gentle simmer of clear spring water stir the fall leaves floating there. I sing the night sky filled with jewels and I remember a pre-dawn winter morning when I stepped outside to get the paper and the stars were strewn like jewels across black silk -- and then one star stirred to life and streaked across the sky. I sing a flock of beating wings, and I'm in a car with the family the week before Easter, traveling across Saskatchewan on our way to Edmonton, with the sky overhead a complex interweaving of rivers and rivers of birds migrating north, and the song A River of Birds, by Libana, appropriately playing on the tape recorder. And here's a few photos to go with some of the other phrases: And the last verse:
Every glowing sunset, every outstretched leaf is witness to the glory of the One who sits as Chief. Death disrupts life. A truism, perhaps, one that we all know in our heads and some of us have encountered more closely, grieving the unexpected loss of a loved one.
Sometimes death comes more gently. John's Uncle Lee died last week, and this weekend we set aside our usual schedule and traveled down to Ft Wayne to join the family gathered there. Lee was 87 and suffering in his later years from dementia, accelerated by the death of his wife nearly six years ago, in a car accident. Family came from California and Virginia and various points in between, gathering to celebrate Lee's life and to say good bye. It was good to be with this mix of cousins, aunts, uncles and in-laws, catching up on each others' lives, and helping to "tuck in" Lee with a flower or a shovelful of dirt. And as Lee's six year old grandson said, after being told that his grandpa was with grandma in heaven. "Now Grandpa remembers me." From John O'Donohue's "A Morning Offering":
All that is eternal in me Welcomes the wonder of this day, The field of brightness it creates Offering time for each thing To arise and illuminate. And a few illuminated things from the past few sunny days, each with its own type of brightness. The wind has shaken loose a blizzard of leaves the last day or two. Here's the golden carpet I found in the plaza in front of the Good Library yesterday morning. It was also a day with some fascinating bird sightings. Coming back across campus, I saw this hawk, with its breakfast of gray squirrel. There have been Cooper's hawks nesting on campus the past few years, but this fellow doesn't match the picture in my Peterson Field Guide. Any bird lovers out there who can tell what it is? Then in the afternoon, this cardinal caught my eye as it fluffed itself up, and splashed enthusiastically in the bird bath. Its red head and breast glowed, but its wings were more the color of a female cardinal. (Hard to tell in these photos, because the wings are in motion, scattering the water.) And in a different sort of encounter, Jep Hostetler sent me a video of this bird sighting out his window, up in Collegeville, Minnesota.
This past week John and I flew north to spend a week with his parents in Edmonton. As usual, our time included a trip outside the city, traveling across rolling prairie under the big sky, to the acreage where Ike and Millie have a small cabin, a garden, and a forest of shimmering poplar trees. We harvested potatoes and beets, ate a picnic lunch in the fall sunshine and enjoyed golden poplars, blue sky, and red-orange virginia creeper -- and the sight and sound of what was probably several hundred sandhill cranes gathering for their migration south. As we were getting ready for lunch, we heard a noisy clattering, and it wasn't Santa and his reindeer. Looking up, we spotted a large flock high in the sky, circling in an updraft. Millie says that both geese and sandhill cranes are about ready to migrate. Going by the height and the noise, we assume that these were cranes. If you look closely above, you can see two of the three flocks that eventually came together.
I didn't have the right video equipment to do this justice, but below is a short clip to give you a glimpse and a bit of the sound. Unfortunately the website is not letting me change the orientation to match the vertical way I recorded it, and the focus isn't as sharp as I'd like. So you may have to squint a bit to see the specks of birds circling, listen hard to hear the clatter, and turn your computer sideways to get the right orientation. But perhaps you'll be able to imagine a bit of how amazing it was. Thistledown is such a fun word. I just double-checked the names of the fairies in Midsummer Night's Dream, thinking that surely Shakespeare used it. But no -- Peaseblossom, Moth, Cobweb, Mustardseed, and of course Puck, but nary a Thistledown. I can just see her though, with a spiky purple cap and an intricate, airy white gown.
And this thistledown along the millrace was catching the light a few days ago. A goldfinch landed on the one above, loosing a cascade of fluff, but flew off again immediately. I've just been reading that finches like to line their nests with the down. (I also read that finches don't like their feeders to be too close to other types of birdfeeders -- maybe this explains why the finch feeder hanging near the sunflower tube and the hummingbird feeder has not gotten much attention from finches this summer.) At Faith House Fellowship last week, one of the farmers in the group gave us an invitation to think of positive aspects of our current drought. "No mosquitoes." "Hardly any weeds." "No need to mow the lawn."
Another participant mentioned that she'd been keeping her eyes open for what was thriving, either thanks to, or despite the drought. So yesterday I went out with the camera and that idea in mind, and found a few things to record. |
My approach to contemplative photography --
"Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it." Mary Oliver in "Sometimes" Archives
August 2020
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